Minimalism, Redux
Welcome to my random musings about the world, on a weekly-to-occasional basis.
Where we are: We’re still in Raleigh, wrapping up the last few errands, the last few hangs and hugs and gab-sessions with friends and family before we head back out into the wild blue yonder on Monday.
Minimalism, Redux
In 2012, when we sold our house, we downsized to a two-bedroom apartment (we still had one kid in high school). In 2015, when that kid graduated from high school, we downsized to two carry-on suitcases and two small backpacks.
Except—we put a couple of banker’s boxes into a small storage unit. There were just a few bits and bobs of baby memorabilia and family records that I couldn’t quite give up.
Every year when we come to Raleigh, we visit the storage locker and Lee asks me if I’m ready to let that stuff go. I never am. If you read books about the emotional aspects of concepts like minimalism and downsizing and death-cleaning, you quickly learn that offloading stuff is never quite as easy as you might think.
There’s always a small core of ‘essential’ items that have such emotional significance that we fear without them, we’ll be adrift. We’ll lose our identity, our history, our memories. We can’t imagine life without those treasures.
Here’s the thing, though: I do just fine without those items for fifty weeks per year. I forget they even exist. It’s only when I slide back the bolt on our storage locker and see the 3-6-9-12 month portraits of my babies that I remember: oh right, I can’t possible survive without those.
Except that I just did, for a whole year.
Several years ago, a friend to whom we had given several pieces of art gave them back, and Lee and I both panicked.
We had—literally— forgotten that those paintings, that vase, ever existed, and now we had to go through the whole process of agonizing, deciding, acting, and processing all over again.
We wedged the pieces into our storage locker, and let them marinate for a couple of years. We visited them while we were in Raleigh, and each time my shoulders slumped and my brain froze and I felt paralyzed by some kind of emotional responsibility for those random scraps of a life I have very clearly chosen not to live any more.
On this visit, we finally gave those five pieces away again—the ones we had already released in 2015, only to have them boomerang back years later. The whole cycle felt absurd: forgetting them, then fretting over them, then finally letting them go a second time.
Which is maybe the real lesson: downsizing isn’t a one-time purge. It’s a recurring negotiation with memory. Sometimes the hardest part isn’t giving something up, but realizing you already have.
Maybe letting go isn’t something you finish—it’s something you practice.
Take care,
Lisa
P.S. Thanks for reading, and feel free to share. If you have feedback, I’d love to hear it. And if someone forwarded this to you, thank them for me, and go to https://bookwoman.com/ to subscribe.